East-West Construction Vice President Nilesh Patel tallied "The Number" on a scrap of paper he kept tucked in his wallet.

A MetroHealth employee penned "The Number" in a personal pocket calendar, obliterating old entries with ink scribbles so they became unreadable.

It was their way of keeping track of a $678,000 bribery scam in which taxpayers footed the bill.

Charges filed in U.S. District Court Thursday said Patel, the unnamed MetroHealth employee and former MetroHealth Vice President John Carroll talked regularly about "The Number."

The figure represented the running balance of money that Carroll and the other MetroHealth employee needed to inflate East-West's contracts so the company could recoup what Patel spent on vacations, high-end clothes and other gifts to hospital officials who oversaw Patel's taxpayer-funded contracts.

Carroll's assistant,who was not charged and is not identified by name, was careful not to chat on the phone or in MetroHealth offices with Patel or Carroll about the number. He was so nervous about Patel's tracking of the number on a slip of paper, that he once offered to credit Patel $1,000 in exchange for destroying it,according to the charges.

But the two men were also able to laugh about it. When the number became high, Patel joked that he should buy a life insurance policy on the unnamed employee, presumably to ensure payment.

That worker also asked Patel to jot notes onbusiness cards, such as "Congratulations on your graduation" to cover up a bribe and make it look likePatel was giving a gift for a special occasion.

Carroll no longer works for MetroHealth. He was fired from his $195,000 job after an IRS audit showed he accepted gifts from Patel's company.

Patel and Carroll are cooperating with federal authorities, their lawyers said.

If Carroll and Patel follow in the footsteps of others who have already pleaded guilty, including former county employees J. Kevin Kelley, Kevin Payne and Daniel Gallagher, federal prosecutors might come up with a new number: restitution. Carroll and Patel might be ordered to pay the hospital for its losses in the scheme. Hospital officials, who say they were the victims, would gladly accept any payback.

That money "could go toward any number of high priority programs that we want to fund," Mark Moran, the hospital's chief executive said.

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